Saturday, January 03, 2009

PBS Kids Shows

I'm really pleased with Sid the Science Kid (may recommend that my students watch it!) but what's the deal with the de-emphasis of phonics on the reading shows? Research does indicate that "phonemical awareness" (or something like that) is more important than phonics, and reason dictates that in a language as crazy non-phonenitcal as English (I had ghoti for Shabbos dinner, for example) phonics are not the best way to learn reading ... but still, it seems that every so often (shortly before I went into pre-school, nowadays it seems) everyone gets too excited about research that is never as conclusive as is claimed and reason that only goes so far in an irrational world (nu? if the world were so rational, English would be phonetic so phonics would work anyway ...) with the result that, well, kids just don't learn to read.

So? What's with the lack of phonics in the reading oriented kids shows?